Taxi drivers defer any action for two weeks

Dublin taxi-drivers will continue to provide a service over the next two weeks while a steering committee considers proposals, including the threat of strike action, to put to the Minister of State for the environment, Mr Bobby Molloy.

More than 3,000 members of the National Taxi-Drivers Union and the Irish Taxi-Drivers Federation gathered at the National Stadium in Dublin yesterday to consider their response to the Minister's announcement on Tuesday, that the number of taxis in Dublin would double by May 2000.

The president of the Irish Taxi-Drivers Federation, Mr John Ussher, said he expected to meet the Minister "within the next fortnight".

Taxi-drivers said the release of 3,100 new licences for £2,500 and £2,000 would mean their wages would be halved and their investments wiped out. Some have paid up to £80,000 for their taxi licences. It had been thought that there would be a ballot for all-out strike at yesterday's meeting but, according to Mr Vincent Kearns of the Irish Taxi Drivers Union, a decision was made to use the meeting to gather the views of members.

Following the meeting - from which all press were excluded - Mr Ussher said an all-out strike had "certainly not been ruled out", but that the "ball was now back in the Minister's court".

"We had been working well with the four local authorities [in Dublin] but the Minister has tried to bully us." A committee of seven men and one woman has been elected and a number of proposals have been put to it.

Mr Ussher said these proposals would now be considered by the committee, which would meet within a week. It would report back to members at another meeting within two weeks and proposals would then be brought to the Minister, he said.

Among the proposals are calls for immediate strike action as well as a buy-back scheme, where current licence-owners would be compensated the price they had paid for the licence.